Thomson Licensing

Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc.

Rca Inc.

Thomson Licensing S.a.

Kenneth Wayne Maze

Robert H Miller

Keith Reynolds Wehmeyer

Hugh Boyd Morrison

Sheila Renee Crosby

Megan Louise Brown

Jeffrey Philip Reavis

Joseph W Forler

Mark Francis Rumreich

Eric Douglas Romesburg

Michael Scott Deiss

David J Duffield

Kevin Elliott Bridgewater

Billy W Beyers, Jr

Thomas H Hamilton

In a television system in which at least program title information for programs which are to be transmitted in the future is transmitted in advance to form a channel guide listing, apparatus is provided for searching the listing for specific user-entered information, and upon successful conclusion to the search, the apparatus schedules the tuning of the desired program, or in the alternative, notifies the viewer of the availability of the program. In those instances where descriptive text accompanies the program listing, apparatus of the invention performs a search of the text for a particular text string which may relate to the title, the star, the director, or the context of the program, among other search criteria.

Scheduler apparatus employing a gopher agent for use in a television receiver

Scheduler apparatus employing a gopher recording agent for use in a television receiver

Scheduler apparatus employing a gopher agent

Television apparatus includes first and second auxiliary data decoders for simultaneously extracting auxiliary data from respective first and second television signals to produce first and second auxiliary data. The data decoders can selectably extract data from one or more auxiliary data intervals, e.g., one or more line intervals during vertical blanking within a television signal. The first and second auxiliary data is coupled to a controller such as the main microprocessor of the television system. The second auxiliary data is coupled to the controller via an auxiliary data buffer and an I.sup.2 C serial data bus. The television signal from which the second auxiliary data is extracted can be provided by a second television signal source such as a second tuner or an external signal source (e.g., video cassette recorder, video disk player, and the like).

Television apparatus for simultaneous decoding of auxiliary data

An on-screen display system for displaying instructions for guiding a user to utilize various features of a consumer electronics product such as a television receiver or VCR, includes a memory for storing both uncompressed text data and compressed text data, and an associated microprocessor for retrieving the text data, decompressing it if necessary, and presenting it to a display buffer. Text data compression is in part accomplished by a dictionary containing text data representing commonly used text 'strings' comprising one or more words which is stored in the memory. Code words related to the location of respective dictionary entries in memory are substituted for respective uncompressed text data. Text data compression is also accomplished by substituting a format change code word indicating that adjacent text data representing a first string of text with a first format, such as all lower case or mixed case, is to be converted to text data representing a second string of text with a second format, such as all upper case or title case. In this way, text data representing text differing only in format only needs to be stored once. The format change code word is employed both in the uncompressed text data portion of the memory and in the dictionary portion of the memory and the text data, whether uncompressed or compressed, is retrieved and formatted for display in the same manner.

Television on-screen display system utilizing text data compression

A television receiver system having secondary picture display capability (such as PIP or POP) includes two tuners and signal processing arrangements, and circuitry for receiving a transmitted channel guide. In response to a 'BROWSE' command, the receiver maintains the currently-tuned first channel as the source for the main picture, displays text related to a television show on a second channel, activates the secondary picture display circuitry, and tunes the second tuner to the second channel. In this way, the viewer can simultaneously get the benefit of both a text description of the television show on the second channel and view a secondary image of the television show on the second channel, without tuning away from the first channel supplying the main picture.

Television receiver using received channel guide information and a

The digitized video image data stored in a video RAM in a pix-in-pix television receiver is modified by the addition of digital data from an external computer via a computer interface circuit under control of the pix-in-pix controller. The computer interface circuit is coupled to the internal controller of the television receiver via an external input terminal. The additional digital data received from the external computer may be representative of either text or graphics to be merged into the stored video image.

Data transfer from an external computer to a television receiver having

A video input signal is stored in a memory and read twice during a line-interval to provide a processed video output signal having a doubled line rate for display on a display device having a doubled horizontal sweep rate thereby providing a progressively scanned image having reduced visibility of line structure. The last address written in memory is used to control the starting time of the second memory read operation. This reduces the tendency of visible artifacts to occur in cases where the video input signal is 'non-standard' in the sense that the ratio of the color subcarrier frequency with respect to the line rate is such that the number of color subcarrier cycles per line may be subject to variation.

Progressive scan television receiver with adaptive memory addressing

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Indianapolis, IN, United States of America

Kenneth Wayne Maze